Don Pearson
Executive Vice President - e.Republic, Group Publisher
For all of Government Technology's publications
Don has over 30 years experience as a business owner, executive and manager, and has lectured all across the United States. His educational background includes graduating cum laude and receiving his master's degree with distinction from California State University at Fresno. He studied as an undergraduate student at Heidelberg University, and as a graduate student at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, receiving a Graduate Fellowship from the Rotary Foundation International.

Don joined the team at Government Technology in 1992 as the first executive director of the Government Technology Executive Forums. The following year he was promoted to executive director of Government Technology Conference (GTC), the company's conference division that holds annual events in Sacramento, California; Albany, New York; and Austin, Texas.

In 1995, Don became the publisher of Government Technology magazine, and today he continues in that position. As of Fall 2007, Don holds the position as Executive VP for e.Republic and Group Publisher for all, Government Technology publications.

Don is an acknowledged dynamic speaker as well as an effective executive. The excitement and understanding he brings to his presentations leaves his audiences with the knowledge, motivation and enthusiasm they need to get out there and succeed.

During his recent years as publisher of Government Technology, he has increasingly been called upon to share information with both industry and government audiences concerning the strategic use of information technology in assisting governments address the mission-critical problems they face.

As Executive VP/Group Publisher, Don is always at the forefront of new technologies and solutions for state and local government, and he shares this perspective with his audiences.

Justin Nemmers
Sr. Solutions Architect and Team Lead, Federal, Red Hat

Justin brings well over a decade of IT experience to the Red Hat Federal Sales team. As a three-year member of Red Hat, he started as a Field Architect designing and implementing solutions for Federal customers, and transitioned to the ranks of Senior Solutions Architect. His professional expertise lie in large systems administration, which encompasses design, delivery, maintenance, and security of supercomputing environments, as well as the smaller support systems such as storage, mail, database, and web servers. He has in-depth knowledge of the underlying principles and technology of the design and implementation of high-availability systems.

Paul Moore
Software Engineer in the Linux Security Group, HP

Paul is a software engineer at HP, working in the Linux security group. He joined HP- then known as Compaq- in 2000, after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Computer Engineering. While at Compaq, Paul worked in the Tru64 UNIX network security group where he worked on IPsec, SSH, and Kerberos. After the Compaq/HP merger, Paul moved into HP's Open Source and Linux Organization, where he currently works.

In the Linux security group, Paul has participated in multiple Common Criteria evaluations, including HP's recent Common Criteria certification of RHEL5 against the CAPP, LSPP, and RBACPP protection profiles at EAL4+. Paul continues to focus on network security while working on Linux. He is the creator of NetLabel, a labeled networking framework for Linux which provides an interoperable CIPSO implementation. In addition, Paul serves as the labeled networking maintainer for the Linux kernel, supporting NetLabel, labeled IPsec, and SECMARK.

Gunnar Hellekson
Sr. Solutions Architect, RHCE, Red Hat

Gunnar is a Sr. Solutions Architect for Red Hat Government, where he works with the Business Development group to help systems integrators and government agencies understand the benefits of open-source software and Red Hat solutions. A Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), he is the author of the white paper "What is Virtualization?” Prior to joining Red Hat, Gunnar worked as a developer, systems administrator, and IT director for a series of start-ups. He has also been a business and IT consultant to not-for-profit organizations in New York City. Most recently, Gunnar spearheaded the reform of safety regulations for New York State's electrical utilities.

John M. Weathersby, Jr.
Executive Director, Open Source Software Institute

John is the founder and executive director of the Open Source Software Institute (www.oss-institute.org). The Open Source Software Institute is a U.S.-based non-profit organization whose mission is to promote development and implementation of open source software solutions within U.S. federal, state and municipal government agencies.

He currently serves as an adviser on open source software issues to a number of federal government entities including the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the U.S. Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief Information Officer (DONCIO).

John serves as a technology and policy adviser to The University of Southern Mississippi's Office of Technology and Economic Development and is a member of the International Advisory Panel for Enterprise Open Source Magazine. He is also the founder of the National Center for Open Source Policy and Research, a non-profit research and development organization which focuses on open source software development and implementation within civilian government and public sector enterprise environments.

Doc Shankar
Executive IT Architect, IBM

Doc is an executive IT architect at IBM. He has extensive experience in computer security. Over the last 6 years, Doc has lead IBM's security initiatives regarding the Linux Operating System. Since climbing the Linux bandwagon, he has been focusing on ways to improve security in Linux-based systems and ensuring customers are comfortable about it. He has a PhD in Computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.

Burr Sutter
Senior Product Manager – SOA, Red Hat

Burr Sutter is a current Sun Java Champion, President of the Atlanta Java Users Group and Founder of the Atlanta Chapter of the International Association of Software Architects and is presently employed at JBoss, a division of Red Hat. He has given presentations at numerous developer conferences such as: No Fluff Just Stuff, Jazoon and JavaPolis on the topics of SOA and ESB.

Robert Ames
Business Unit Executive, National Security Programs; Vice Chair, WMA Technical Vitality Council; IBM Corporation

Robert is a Certified Senior Consulting Systems Architect with diverse IT industry experience. He joined IBM in 2002 through the acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting (PwCC). At PwCC, Robert was instrumental in their strategic data center consolidation project. This project, and the enabling technologies involved gave Robert deep, first-hand knowledge of the benefits of consolidation and ultimately virtualization in building a resilient and adaptive IT infrastructure. Robert has worked closely with clients to create extensible infrastructures which focus on open standards, flexibility, reliability and robust availability. Most recently, Robert designed the winning IBM infrastructure in support of the Total Ship Compute Environment for Navy DDG 1000 through Raytheon. Robert is currently the Business Unit Executive for IBM Federal, focusing on National Security Programs. Prior to this position, Robert was the Strategy Leader for IBM’s Federal Systems and Technology Group and Manager of the Federal Systems Architect team.

Ed Fakler
Ed leads Red Hat's North American middleware sales and has over 25 years experience in the software industry. He has experience with industry leaders such as EDS, Oracle, and Forte (acquired by Sun) as well experience leading sales teams with several start-ups; the most recent being MetaMatrix which was acquired by Red Hat in May, 2007. He has a strong technical background and over 17 years sales and sales management experience. Ed graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

Paul Smith
Paul Smith is Vice President of Government Sales Operations at Red Hat. Paul joined Red Hat in November 2004 and leads the Red Hat Government business unit with responsibility for sales, marketing, consulting, channels and strategic planning. The business unit is responsible for the U.S. Federal government worldwide and the U.S. State, Local and Education marketplace nationally. Paul brings to Red Hat more than 20 years of experience marketing key technologies to the government marketplace holding various management positions in the sales of software solutions to government agencies and to systems integrators.

Karl Wirth
Director of Security Business, Red Hat
Karl is included in the developments of www.freeipa.org (the open source project enabling identity and access management for the Unix/Linux world), security features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Red Hat's layered security products like Red Hat Directory Server and Red Hat Certificate System. Prior to working at Red Hat, Karl was the Director of Product Management at Sentillion, a healthcare focused Identity and Access Management company. He spent 5 years at RSA Security (now EMC) where he was responsible for the RSA SecurID authentication business as well as other authentication solutions. Karl graduated from Harvard University with a degree in physics.

Christopher Dale
Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

Christopher has over 15 years experience in system architecture and design for large scale data processing systems for government and commercial clients. Currently, he is supporting a Federal Government client in the architecture, design and implementation of an SOA enabled grid infrastructure. Christopher is an RHCE and a long time advocate of the open source philosophy.

Isaac Christoffersen
Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

Isaac has over 10 years experience in system integration and software solution development for commercial and government clients. Currently, he is supporting a Federal Government client in the architecture, design, development and implementation of Service Oriented Architectures utilizing Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), XML and other technologies. Isaac is a professional member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and a recovering Microsoft Certified Solution Developer.

David Schillero
Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

David has over 20 years experience in system integration and software solution development for DoD and other government clients. Currently, he is supporting a Federal Government client in the design, development and implementation of Service Oriented Architectures utilizing Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), XML and other technologies.

Lene Jensen
Certification Manager, Red Hat

Lene Jensen is a Certification Manager, where she works with the many certifications that Red Hat provides. She has worked with Linux since 1992, and Red Hat distributions since 1995. She is a Red Hat Certified Architect and Red Hat Certified Security Specialist. Prior to her role as Certification Manager, she was an Instructor for Red Hat for many years, working in Europe, Africa and USA. She is particularly interested in security and virtualization.

Robert Hurst
Sr. Cache Enterprise Administrator, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Robert has been with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center since August 2005, providing UNIX and clinical systems support in an enterprise datacenter, whereas its clinical classic and web applications are developed in-house, running on InterSystems Caché. He has also designed and installed highly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. Robert's breadth of experience enables him to provide 'fit' in any need of an implementation process, including hardware and software selection, configuration, and installation. As an accomplished systems and applications programmer, Robert has worked on all aspects of the software development cycle.

Joel Berman
Director of Product Management for RHEL and Virtualization
Joel Berman is currently a Product Management Director at Red Hat and is responsible for Red Hats Enterprise Linux and virtualization. Before joining Red Hat in 2005 he spent 33 years at Digital/Compaq/HP in various engineering and marketing positions. Between 1990 and 1998 he lived in Hong Kong and managed Digital and Compaqs APAC UNIX, Linux and HPC markets.

Joel's expertise is in enterprise computing, especially high availability, high performance transactional systems. He has worked with many of the worlds largest banking and telecoms companies and was very involved in the transitions from Mainframes to UNIX, and now to Linux for robust and high performance systems.

Joel's undergraduate work was at Boston University, and he received a Diploma in Industrial Management from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He currently resides in Massachusetts, USA.